LOT Polish airlines starts accepting Bitcoin

LOT Polish Airlines recently announced that their customers can now buy plane tickets with Bitcoin using the company’s website or their mobile app.

The company recently realised the potential of digital currencies and wanted to be able to cater to an ever growing list of clients, says a press release. LOT now allows clients to buy tickets using BTC and assures the transactions are convenient and fully secure.

However, a point to be noted is that the airline is not directly accepting Bitcoin, but instead is making use of a payment service provider to convert the BTC to fiat currency at the checkout stage.

The airline is working with Polish payment service provider Polski Standard Płatności, which will be responsible for dealing with the transactions. As soon as a client pays for tickets using cryptocurrency, the Bitcoins are converted according to the market of purchase. So if the client is in Poland, the fiat currency of choice will be Poland’s zloty Poland. The BTC will be converted to euros in Germany and to US dollars in the United States.

[tweet_box design=”default”]LOT now allows clients to buy tickets using BTC and assures the transactions are convenient and fully secure.[/tweet_box]

The director of sales and distribution Jiri Marek said:

“It‘s just a matter of time until payments with online currency become as popular as using credit cards today. We noticed this potential, which is why we are one of the first airlines in the world to give its passengers the possibility of paying with Bitcoins as early as today.”

Marek also said that the company wants to be able to serve every single client and that is why they’re going for innovation, hoping to make their customer’s journey more comfortable and pleasant not just in flight but also at the stage of buying the ticket.

Clients will only be able to see the Bitcoin option once they have chosen the date and time for their flight. The BTC will then be converted at the last stage of payment by the Polish payment processor. After the approval, the client will be redirected to their wallet, where the transaction will be finalized.

The new payment method can be used to pay for tickets to 60 worldwide destinations. Along with Bitcoin, the airline also accepts PayPal, American Express, MasterCard, Visa and bank transfer. The news is sure to boost sales for the Polish airline, since LOT sells one in every three tickets via their website.

Earlier in February 2015, Universal Air Travel Plan (UATP) partnered with Bitnet, empowering 260 airlines to accept Bitcoin as payment. However, none of them has made the decision to directly use Bitcoin so far. Hopefully, that is going to change since more and more airlines are starting to realise Bitcoin’s potential.

LOT is one of the first airlines to accept Bitcoin along with airBaltic and Lithuanian Air, both of whom decided to adopt the digital currency back in 2014. In June this year, Mexico’s TAR airlines also decided to adopt Bitcoin as a payment method, making it the first airline in Latin American to accept Bitcoin.